of disease. The rains were abnormal.

On March 8 a long flank march up the right bank of the Tigris took the
enemy by surprise, and reached Dujaileh, less than ten miles from Kut.
Time was wasted in an orthodox but unnecessary bombardment. The Turks
swarmed back into the redoubt, and we were bloodily thrust back, and
returned to our lines before Hanna, with heavy losses in men and
transport. After that very few cherished any hope of saving Kut.

April was a month of terrible fighting, frontal attacks on a very brave
and exultant enemy. The 13th Division, from Gallipoli, took the Hanna
trenches, which were practically deserted, on April 5. The day went
well for us. In the afternoon Abu Roman lines on the right bank, and in
the evening those of Felahiyeh on the left bank, were carried by storm.
But next day the first of the five battles of Sannaiyat was fought. We
were repulsed.

The Turk's procedure was easy. He shot us down as we advanced over flat
country. We dug ourselves in four hundred yards away (say). Then we
sapped up to within storming distance, and attacked again, to find that
the lines were thinly held, with a machine-gun or two, but that another
position awaited us beyond, at the end of a long level sweep of desert.

On April 9 came the second battle of Sannaiyat. The time has not come
to speak frankly of this day; but our men lay in heaps. So from the
16th to the 18th we tried frontal attacks on the other bank, the right
again. This was the battle of Beit Aiessa. We did so well that the
enemy had to counter-attack, which he did in the most determined
manner, forcing us back. It cost him at least three thousand dead; but
by this day's work he made sure of Kut and its garrison. Our one hope
now was in the Russians. But their offensive halted; and we fought, on
the 22nd, the third of the Sannaiyat battles. On the 29th, after a
siege of one hundred and forty-three days, Kut surrendered, and with it
the biggest British force ever taken by any enemy.

A summer inexpressibly harassing and depressed followed; but towards
the end of 1916 affairs were reorganized, and at last a general was
found. On the night of December 13 we crossed the Shat-el-Hai, and
Maude's attack on Kut began. Ten weeks of fighting, very little
interrupted by the weather, followed. It was stern work, hand-to-hand
and trench-to-trench, as in France. By the end of the third week in
February Kut was doomed. The Turk had made the mistake of le